generalspeaking

Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Unwanted Interlopers

"They (IS loyalists) came in on many
white pickup trucks mounted with big machine guns and fought the
Taliban. The Taliban could not resist and fled.""Unlike
the Taliban, they (IS) don't force villagers to feed and house them.
Instead, they have lots of cash in their pockets and spend it on food
and luring young villagers to join them." Haji Abdul Jan,
tribal elder, Achin district, Afghanistan

Islamic State loyalists are popping up everywhere; in Nigeria with Boko Haram whose version of pure Islam of the 7th Century focusing on bloody conquest and subjugation of both Muslims and minority tribal-ethnic groups and religions whipped into submission through the terror of witnessing atrocities and mass slaughter suit the link perfectly. Islamic State jihadis have spread in the Sinai Peninsula, in Gaza next to Israel, and into Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Egypt.

It is well enough acknowledged that sympathizers as well as future jihadists preparing to launch themselves abroad to join Islamic State have infiltrated Europe. From Sweden and Norway to the Netherlands and France, Britain and Spain, Islamic State has an honoured presence compelling Muslim youth to declare their loyalty to the brave new world of a restored caliphate promised by Islamic State of Iraq and Levant. Of especial attraction it seems is the casual brutality that horrifies the civilized world.

And now, Afghanistan has its very own contingent, opposing the Taliban, the homegrown jihadis who don't fund themselves through oil revenues, sacking museums of their historical artifacts for sale on the world's black markets, kidnapping of Westerners for ransom, and looting the banks of cities taken in Iraq and Syria, but by convincing subsistence Afghan farmers to grow poppies for narcotics production, funding Taliban enclaves.

The new loyalists ensconced in Afghanistan represent for the most part former Taliban disheartened by the lack of success in returning the Taliban to full power in Kabul. Among them are dozens of foreign jihadis as well. The infamous black flag of Islamic State flies in some areas while foreign terrorists take over local mosques to preach using interpreters. Hundreds of militants from around the world have long established themselves along the Afghan-Pakistan border; their origins are not well known in their new support of Islamic State.

According to local officials such as council chief Ahmad Ali Hazrat, and Nangarhar member of parliament Haji Hazrat Ali, Islamic State-dedicated fighters have taken territory from the Taliban in six of the 21 Nangarhar districts.

An Afghan National Army soldier (ANA)
inspects passengers at a checkpoint on the outskirts of Jalalabad
province June 29, 2015. Reuters/Parwiz

Islamic State has an especial appeal to its Afghan supporters. The ruthlessness of its rampaging campaign has endeared it to its followers. The beheading of several Taliban commanders and the success realized by ISIL in capturing significant geographical areas of Iraq and Syria has impressed its admirers while underlining the risks that Afghan government officials face. The U.S.-led training mission is left with the question as to whether Islamic State is capable of gaining a foothold of significance in Afghanistan.

For the time being, the Taliban is dominant in the country of their aspirational retaking and which gave birth to their movement. Islamic State loyalists in Nangarhar are regarded as having excellent organization, to match the level of their funding, both of which are puzzles to Afghan government authorities facing yet another hurdle in their attempts to normalize a country that has never achieved the normalization of peace and security other than sporadically, between invasions.

Tribal elder Haji Abdul Hakim from Kot district speaks of Islamic State fighters distributing pamphlets "to warn people against many crimes". One smuggled letter from the Pachir Agam district was said to have come directly from Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Islamic State caliph, self-styled though he may be. Exhorting "all Mujahideen fighters [are invited] to carry out this holy war under one flag, which is the Islamic State".

For their part, the Taliban has issued its own warning to Islamic State to refrain from interfering in Afghanistan. While admitting they have lost ground in Nangarhar, they claim their rivals are not represented by Islamic State. "They are thieves and thugs ... We will soon clear those areas and free the villagers", Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid stated with confidence. Clashes between the Taliban and Islamic State offshoots have been confirmed by government forces in Nangarhar.

While Malek Islam, the district chief of Achin claimed Afghan forces hadn't confronted Islamic State fighters who were "almost everywhere in the district", but targeting the Taliban. "They [Islamic State] haven't attacked us, and we haven't engaged them either", Islam confided speaking by phone from Achin's district center, held by the government. According to Interior Minister Noor ul-Haq Olomi, though, police had indeed engaged the militants.

"We
have launched a couple of clearance operations in some districts of
Nangarhar and we will continue to do so to deny any terrorist group
territory", stated Interior Minister Olomi.

Afghan National Army soldiers (ANA) inspect
passengers at a checkpoint on the outskirts of Jalalabad province,
eastern Afghanistan, June 29, 2015. Reuters/Parwiz

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British Col. Richard Kemp addresses the UNHRC, contradicting a recent report on the 2014 Gaza war

The U.N. Human Rights Council approached the former
commander of British troops in Afghanistan to join the panel for
investigating the 2014 Gaza war, but his appointment never materialized.

“I was approached by the president’s office of the UNHRC and
asked if I would take part in this commission and I agreed to,”
explained Col. Richard Kemp during a debate at the U.N. on Monday over
its recent report condemning potential war crimes by Israel and
terrorist groups in the Gaza Strip including Hamas, during last summer’s
50-day Operation Protective Edge.

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“I then was told I’d be hearing back soon confirmation. I
heard no more, but subsequently I was told, by other sources, I had
refused the appointment,” he said, adding that the mix-up was
“obviously, unintentional confusion.”

Kemp’s appointment was meant to balance a panel that critics
have said was biased against Israel and the Israel Defense Force’s
actions during Operation Protective Edge, after high-profile British
lawyer Amal Clooney declined the U.N.’s offer to join the commission.

Kemp read from the preliminary findings of the High Level
International Military Group, which included five former chiefs of staff
from major armies worldwide, that “none of us is aware of any army that
takes such extensive measures as did the IDF last summer to protect the
lives of the civilian population in such circumstances.”

Kemp — who was present in Israel during the entire 2014 Gaza
conflict and was a part of the high-level fact-finding mission (“I was
the lowest level of the high level group,” he said) — commended the IDF
for practicing the restraint not to carry out “attacks against
confirmed Hamas targets when they knew that civilians were present, even
to the extent that Israeli Defense Forces restraint on attacking
targets resulted in the deaths of Israeli citizens during that
conflict.”

He also slammed Hamas, saying the group “did more to
deliberately and systematically inflict death suffering and destruction
on its own civilian population, including children, than any other
terrorist group in history.”

He said Hamas sought to cause large numbers of casualties
among their own people to bring about international condemnation,
especially by the U.N.

By “denying this truth, this report faithfully reiterates Hamas’ own forces narrative,” he said.
Also speaking at Monday’s debate was U.S. Maj. Gen. Michael
Jones, the former chief of staff of U.S. central command, who
participated in the JINSA Task Force on the Gaza Conflict, a separate
report on the 2014 operation.

He warned that the Gaza war provided further evidence that
non-state actors have increasingly gained the military capabilities
available typically to states alone: a standing army that is well
trained and well equipped and that operates on a doctrine both published
and promulgated, and contains specialized organizations for
intelligence-gathering and logistics.

Jones like Kemp and others on Monday harangued Hamas, saying
the group “habitually violated international law,” through
indiscriminate rocket fire and storing weapons in places with a civilian
presence, “without military necessity.”

He challenged the conception that storing weapons near
civilian homes or institutions is necessary by Hamas and other groups
because of Gaza’s high population density, saying there are certainly
areas where weapons could be stored, or even launched, “that are not
next to a U.N. compound.”

Lt. Col. Geoffrey S. Corn, the Presidential Research
Professor of Law at the South Texas College of Law, noted Hamas’
flagrant violation of the rules of engagement, such as not requiring its
fighters to wear identifying markers, such as a uniform, making many
fighters virtually indistinguishable from the general population.

He said Hamas went out of its way to fly in the face of the
rules of engagement to complicate Israeli attacks, making it more likely
that the IDF would cause civilian casualties thus bolstering Hamas’
standing internationally.

He also derided the U.N. commission for failing to integrate
the testimonies and opinions of any military experts, save one
unidentified source.

He also warned that relying on the consequences of the Gaza
operation, such as bombed houses or civil institutions, rather than
attempting to perceive IDF actions within the context of a live
battlefield, would embolden Hamas but vindicating the group’s tactics.

The Human Rights Council is set to vote on adopting the
report, at which point it would be sent to an international organization
such as the U.N. General Assembly, the Security Council or the
International Criminal Court in The Hague. Israel — which refused to
cooperate with the commission on its investigation — has called on
members of the UNHRC to oppose the report or refrain from voting on it.

Utter Desolation

The Boko Haram terrorist group has been a scourge of unfettered religious dementia viciously embarked on carnage in the name of Islam, intent on reviving 7th Century Islam as a marauding, entitled horde of scimitar-wielding Bedouin tribesmen in their murderous spree of conquest. Invested with fanatical religion-inspired zeal, they attack villages, slaughter inhabitants, torch their homes and their farms, abduct the women and girls to enslave them.

Like other terrorist groups for whom martyrdom simply means a personal blessing, an advance ticket to Paradise where fulsome praise for their courage in slaughtering human beings by the means of explosives strapped to their bodies entitles them to the divinely ordained services of a harem of virgins, Boko Haram enslaves captured girls, converts them to Islam, and trains them to become living slaves to be bartered.

Some of them can be useful in additional ways, persuaded to surrender their lives for the greater good of the jihadists' vision of terror-induced submission to their rule. Teenage girls whose lives have been turned inside out and rendered unlivable have been dispatched, explosives plastered to their chests, to be detonated when they are in the midst of crowds of people.

In Maiduguri, northeast Nigeria's largest city which also happens to have given birth to Boko Haram, now a faithful ally of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant whose demented ideology they share, two teenage girls conducted a twin suicide bomb attack near a crowded mosque located in a busy market. At least thirty people died, and many more injured in the suicide blast involving Boko Haram captives.

On an increasing basis young girls are being used to do the work of Boko Haram, carrying explosive vests strapped to their bodies, and forced to blow themselves up. These girls wearing those vests don't decide how and when the explosives will go off; that choice is not given them, since they don't represent willing converts to martyrdom. The explosives they carry are remotely detonated, leaving them no option but to be torn to shreds and in the process carry innocent others with them.

This double suicide attack represented the fourth such suicide bombing in Maiduguri in the past three weeks. A witness explained that one of the girls blew herself up as she approached the crowded mosque nearby the Baga Road fish market. People were performing afternoon prayers for the holy month of Ramadan The second girl seemed to remove herself from the area, and when she exploded only she alone died.

Nigeria's new President Muhammadu Buhari announced that he has ordered the military command center to be moved from the capital Abuja to Maiduguri. Simultaneously Boko Harm stepped up its attacks, just as Nigeria and its neighbours prepare plans for a multinational army to be expanded based on its success earlier in the year driving Boko Haram from towns and villages where it had set up its Islamic caliphate.

Attacks continue apace, along with cross-border raids and bombings. Earlier a group of jihadis attacked two towns in Niger. Two buildings, including the national police academy in N'Djamena, Chad were attacked by suicide bombers last week, killing 33 people. Abubakar Shekau, Boko Haram's leader, swore formal allegiance to ISIL, with the result that the terrorist group now has what is considered an 'official' presence in Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon.

The second teenager appeared to run away from the scene and exploded alone, killing only herself

In Syria, where Islamic State's presence comprises the major portion of its 'caliphate', jihadists indulged in their usual savagery by tying two young boys to a beam by their wrists to be left hanging for hours as punishment for breaking the Ramadan fast. According to the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights this punishment happened in the village of Mayadeen in Deir Ezzor province.

A sign was put in place beside where the boys hung, to inform passersby that the pair was receiving due punishment for eating during daylight hours. The ISIL religious police force known as the Hisbah seized the boys on the weekend, suspending them from a pole, leaving them in a public square as a living warning not to disobey the tenets of Islamic State Sharia law.

The notice read: "They broke the fast with no religious justification."

Sunday, June 28, 2015

Ah Yes, of Course, the Religion of Peace

"Members of the [Sunni and Shia] sects have co-existed for centuries and share many fundamental beliefs and practices.""The differences lie in the fields of doctrine, ritual, law, theology and religious organization.""Their leaders also often seem to be in competition."BBC

Video footage from the scene showed several bodies on the floor of the Imam Sadiq mosque amid debris [Via Twitter/@LatestinKw]
Quite the understatement, that. There is no denying that both the minority Shiite sect and the majority Sunni sect of Islam do share fundamental beliefs and practices, just from a different initial perspective over the centuries, and often targeting one another as heretics. If the differences stem from disagreements in doctrine, ritual, law, theology and religious organization, those aspects together so fundamental to a shared belief, mark them as basically oppositional.

What is basic to each sect is their veneration of Allah, and the Prophet Mohammad; the Shiites wedded to control and influence descended from the line of the prophet, and the Sunnis content with reliance on the concept of an inheritance through popular assent, not descent. That basic schism has served to ensure the focal point of dissent, earned each the distinction of an unforgivable assault on Islam itself and a corresponding insult to Mohammad in the opinion of the other.

Their tribal Bedouin inheritance geared traditionally to war has ensured ever since that each has been prepared to piously accuse the other of unforgivable disrespect to Islam, deserving of the most hideous types of vengeance to be visited on one another, for in insulting the integrity of Islam, they assault the very reason to worship, offensively refusing to surrender to the Almighty's call upon his faithful.

Wherever a Middle East nation has a minority population of tyrannical power as in Syria with a Shia-Alawite-Baathist regime tormenting and oppressing a majority Sunni population, dysfunction reigns supreme. And when the tables can be turned as when the Iraqi Sunni-Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein, exploited and beggared his majority Shiite population, with his removal the Shiites came into their own and oppressed the minority Sunnis.

In each instance the national cohesion disintegrated and chaos ensued, permitting the rise of fanatical Islamist jihadist groups claiming to speak for imperial Islam and reclaiming the classic caliphate. In their zeal to reflect the origins of Islam, they have reverted to the initiations of Islamic rule by conquest, running amok with suicide bombers, beheadings and crucifixions in place of rampaging scimitars.

Osama bin Laden's revolt against Saudi Arabian complicity with the United States was only the initial manifestation of Islamism reborn. His example and his death have given birth to the Islamic State, heralding the new world order advancing inexorably in its march of ultimate conquest. It's a tossup which is more dedicated to archaic brutality, the Shiite jihadism of Iran with its flirtation with nuclear weaponry or the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, both exhorting to sublime martyrdom.

"[Osama bin Laden died] with more sanctity and honour in the eyes of Allah than any Christian, atheist, or Jew", proclaimed a Wahhabi preacher whom the Foundation for Defense of Democracies quotes in the National Interest, highlighting "how leaders from all five Sunni-ruled Gulf monarchies -- the Saudi king in particular" -- have promoted this preacher.

Mourners carry the body of one of the victims of the mosque bombing
during a mass funeral in Kuwait City on 27 June 2015. Photograph: Yasser
Al-Zayyat/AFP/Getty Images

Who is Responsible for the Atrocities in the Muslim World?

If colonialism were the main problem, Muslims, too, still are, colonizers -- and not particularly "humanitarian" ones, at that.

Islamic jihad and Islamic violence; the sanctioning of sex
slavery; dehumanization of women; hatred and persecution of non-Muslims
have been commonplace in the Islamic world ever since the inception of
the religion. Deny everything and blame "the infidel."

But is it America that tells these men to treat their wives or
sisters as less than fully human? If we want to criticize the West for
what is going on in the Muslim world, we should criticize it for not
doing more to stop these atrocities.

Trying to whitewash the damage that the Islamic ideology has done
to the Muslim world, while putting the blame of Islamic atrocities on
the West, will never help Muslims face their own failures and come up
with progressive ways to resolve them.

Every time the ISIS, Boko Haram, Iran, or any terrorist group in the
Muslim world is discussed, many people tend to hold the West responsible
for the devastation and murders they commit. Nothing could be farther
from the truth. Blaming the failures in the Muslim world on Western
nations is simply bigotry and an attempt to shift the blame and to
prevent us from understanding the real root cause of the problem.

When these Islamic terrorist groups abduct women to sell them as
sex-slaves or "wives;" conduct mass crucifixions and forced conversions;
behead innocent people en masse; try to extinguish religious minorities
and demolish irreplaceable archeological sites, the idea that this is
the fault of the West is ludicrous, offensive and wrong.

Western states, like many other states, try to protect the security
of their citizens. What they essentially need, therefore, are peaceful
states as partners with which they can have economic, commercial and
diplomatic relations. They do not need genocidal terrorist groups that
destroy life, peace and stability in huge swaths across the Muslim
world.

Western states also have democratic and humanitarian values, which
Islamic states do not. The religious and historical experiences of the
Western world and the Islamic world are so enormously different that
they ended up having completely different cultures and values.
The West, established on Jewish, Christian and secular values, has
created a far more humanitarian, free and democratic culture. Sadly,
much of the Muslim world, under Islamic sharia law, has created a
misogynistic, violent and totalitarian culture.

This does not mean that the West has been perfect and sinless. The
West still commits some appalling crimes: Europe is guilty of paving the
way for the slaughter of six million Jews in the Holocaust, and for still
not protecting its Jewish communities. Even today, many European states
contort logic to recognize Hamas, which openly states that it aims to
commit genocide against Jewish people.

The West, however, accepts responsibility for the failures in its own
territories: for instance, not being able to protect European women
from Muslim rapists. These men have moved to Europe to benefit from the
opportunities and privileges there, but instead of showing gratitude to
European people and government, they have raped the women there, and
tried to impose Islamic sharia law.

If we want to criticize the West for what is going on in the Muslim
world, we should criticize it for not doing more to stop these
atrocities.

The West, and particularly the U.S., should use all of its power to
stop them -- especially the genocides committed against Jews, Christians
and other non-Muslims in the Muslim world.
We should also criticize the West -- and others, such as the United
Nations and its distorted Gaza War report -- for supporting those who
proudly commit terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians, and we
should criticize the West for not siding with the state of Israel in the
face of genocidal Jew-hatred.

We should criticize the West for letting Islamic anti-Semitism grow in Europe, making lives unbearable for Jews day by day.

We should criticize the West for having accepted without a murmur the
Turkish occupation of Northern Cyprus for more than 40 years.

We should also criticize the West for leaving the fate of Kurds, a
persecuted and stateless people, to the tender mercies of Turkey, Iran,
Iraq and Syria -- and now the Islamic State (ISIS). On June 25, ISIS
carried out yet another deadly attack, killing and wounding dozens of people in the Kurdish border town of Kobani, in Syrian Kurdistan.

And we should criticize especially the current U.S. government for
not being willing to take serious action to stop ISIS, Boko Haram and
other extremist Islamic groups.[1]

The list could go on and on. Moreover, it would not be realistic to
claim that these groups or regimes all misunderstand the teachings of
their religion in exactly the same way.
It would also not be realistic to claim that the West has created all
these hundreds of Islamic terror groups across the Muslim world.

The question, then, is: Who or what does create all these terrorist groups and regimes?
In almost all parts of the Muslim world, systematic discrimination,
and even murder, are rampant -- especially of women and non-Muslims.
Extremist Islamic organizations, however, are not the only offenders.
Many Muslim civilians who have no ties with any Islamist group also
commit these offenses daily. Jihad (war in the service of Islam) and the
subjugation of non-Muslims are deeply rooted in the scriptures and
history of Islam.

Ever since the seventh century, Muslim armies have invaded and
captured Jewish, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist and Zoroastrian lands; for
more than 1400 years since, they have continued their jihad, or Islamic
raids, against other religions.

Many people seem to be justifiably shocked by the barbarism of ISIS,
but Islamic jihad does not belong just to ISIS. Violent jihad is a
centuries-long tradition of Islamic ideology. ISIS is just one jihadist
army of Islam. There are many.

All of this is an Islamic issue. The free West has absolutely nothing
to do with the creation and preservation of this un-free culture.

The West has, on the contrary, been the victim of Islamic military
campaigns and imperialistic pursuits: Christian peoples of Europe have
been exposed to Ottoman invasions and subjugation for centuries. The
fall of Byzantine Empire marked the peak of Islamic Jihad in Christian
lands. Many places in Europe -- including Greece, Bulgaria, Albania,
Bosnia, Croatia, Hungary, Serbia, and Cyprus, among others -- were all
invaded and occupied by the Ottoman armies. Other targets, including
Venice, Austria, and Poland, had to fight fierce defensive wars to
protect their territories.

The historical and current troubles in the Muslim world are not,
therefore, problems "imported" from an outside source; they are internal
cultural and political problems, which Muslim regimes and peoples have
reproduced for centuries.

Some of the things that women in Saudi Arabia may not do were listed in The Week
magazine: Saudi women are not allowed to "go anywhere without a male
chaperone, open a bank account without their husband's permission, drive
a car, vote in elections, go for a swim, compete freely in sports, try
on clothes when shopping, enter a cemetery, read an uncensored fashion
magazine and buy a Barbie and so on."

Of course, there is nothing specific in Islamic scriptures about
cars, fashion magazines or Barbie Dolls. But there is enough there that
indicates why all of these abuses, and more, are widespread across the
Islamic world, and why the clerics, imams and muftis approve them.
The central issue is to see how the lines that the Islamic theology
draws seed the soil in which this kind of discrimination systematically
buds, why it is extolled and how it is advocated.
Saudi Arabia is not the only Muslim country where women are
dehumanized. Throughout almost the almost the entire Muslim world --
including Turkey, considered one of the most "liberal" Muslim countries
-- women are continually abused or killed by their husbands,
ex-husbands, boyfriends, fathers, brothers or other males. [2]

Is it America that tells these men to treat their wives or sisters as less than fully human?
Is the West really what stops them from respecting human rights or
resolving their political matters through diplomatic and peaceful ways?
Are Muslims too stupid to make wise decisions, and act responsibly? Why
should Americans or Europeans have evil wishes for the rest of the
world?

Demonizing Western nations -- even after all of their cultural, scientific and rational progress -- is simply pure racism.

"The belief that the West is always guilty is among the dozen bad ideas for the 21st century," wrote
the Australian pastor, Dr. Mark Durie. "This irrational and unhelpful
idea is taught in many schools today and has become embedded in the
world views of many. It is essentially a silencing strategy, sabotaging
critical thinking."

Another term that prevents one from understanding the root causes of
the conflicts in the Muslim world is "moral relativism" -- a politically
correct term that really means moral cowardice.

Defending "moral relativism" and saying that "all cultures are equal"
really means saying a culture that encourages child marriages, beating
women and selling girls on slave markets has a value equal to a culture
that respects women and recognizes their rights, and which renounces
wanton violence.

Another popular target of blame for the failures in the Muslim world is historical British colonialism.

If colonialism were the main problem, however, Muslims, too, were,
and still are, colonizers -- and not particularly "humanitarian" ones,
at that. The Muslim colonizers do not even seem to have contributed much
to the culture of the places they invaded and colonized. In fact, they
have actually delayed the progress of the areas they colonized. The
printing press, for instance, came to the Ottoman territories almost 200
years later than to Europe.

"Books... undermine the power of those who control oral knowledge,
since they make that knowledge readily available to anyone who can
master literacy," wrote Professor Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson.
This threatened to undermine the existing status quo, where knowledge
was controlled by elites. The Ottoman sultans and religious
establishment feared the creative destruction that would result. Their
solution was to forbid printing." [3]

"European Empires -- the British, French and Italians -- had a
short-lived presence in North Africa and the Middle East compared with
the Ottoman Empire, which ruled over that region for more than 500
years," said the historian Niall Ferguson.

"The culture that exists in the greater Middle East and
North Africa today bears very, very few resemblances to the culture that
Europeans tried to implement there, beginning in the late 19th century
and carrying on through to the mid-20th century.
"You can't say it is the fault of imperialism and leave out the
longest living empire in the Middle East, which was the Ottoman Empire, a
Muslim Empire, which went back much farther than any of the European
Empires mentioned in that piece."

Muslim states continue to occupy and colonize various territories --
including Kurdistan, Baluchistan and the northern part of Cyprus, an EU
member state.

"One of the most tragic consequences of the 1974 Turkish invasion," according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
of the Republic of Cyprus, "and the subsequent illegal occupation of
36.2% of the territory of the Republic of Cyprus, is the violent and
systematic destruction of the cultural and religious heritage in the
occupied areas.

"Hundreds of historic and religious monuments in various regions of
the occupied areas have been destroyed, looted and vandalized. Illegal
'excavations' have been carried out and cultural treasures have been
stolen from museums and private collections and were sold abroad."
Muslim groups and regimes continue to persecute indigenous peoples
such as Assyrians, Chaldeans, Mandaeans, Shabaks, Copts, Yezidis, and
Bedoon, among many others.

"A substantial segment of the Bedoon population lives with the constant threat of deportation hanging over it," according to the analyst Ben Cohen. "Around 120,000 Bedoon live without nationality and with none of the rights that flow from citizenship."

"Its members cannot obtain birth or marriage
certificates, or identity cards, or driving licenses. They are banned
from access to public health and education services. Their second-class
status means they have no access to the law courts in order to pursue
their well-documented claims of discrimination. And on those rare
occasions that they summon the will to protest publicly—as they did in
2011, when demonstrators held signs bearing slogans like, 'I Have a
Dream'—the security forces respond with extraordinary brutality, using
such weapons as water cannons, concussion grenades, and tear gas with
reckless abandon."

It is not the West or Israel committing these crimes against the
Bedoon community; it is Kuwait, a wealthy Islamic state, which treats
defenseless people as if they are slaves.
In Qatar, another wealthy Islamic state, Nepalese migrants building
a football stadium, "[h]ave died at a rate of one every two days...
This figure does not include the deaths of Indian, Sri Lankan and
Bangladeshi workers.... The Nepalese foreign employment promotion board
said that 157 of its workers in Qatar had died between January and
mid-November" last year. In 2013, the figure for that period was 168."

The
family of a Nepalese migrant worker, who died in Qatar, prepares to
bury him. Nepalese laborers in Qatar are forced to work in dangerous
conditions, and die at the rate of one every two days. (Image source: Guardian video screenshot)

"In Libya, naturalisation is only open to a man if he is of Arab descent," reported
the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). "And many
Akhdam in Yemen, a small ethnic minority who may be descendants of
African slaves, are reportedly unable to obtain citizenship."

Is that not apartheid?

In Kuwait, only Muslim applicants may seek naturalization, while
Libya's nationality law allows for the withdrawal of nationality on the
grounds of conversion from Islam to another religion."

Is that not apartheid? Apartheid laws seem to reign over many places in the Muslim world.
Trying to whitewash the damage the Islamic ideology has done to the
Muslim world, while putting the blame of Islamic atrocities on the West,
will never help Muslims face their own failures and come up with
progressive ways to resolve them.

"All the world's Muslims have fewer Nobel Prizes than Trinity
College, Cambridge. They did great things in the Middle Ages, though," wrote the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins on Twitter, after which other Twitter users piled on to criticize him.

It seems that having oil reserves, per capita, that dwarf anything
available to Western countries does not create leading scientific
nations.

What holds Muslims back when they have unmatched advantages of
underground treasures? Why did the scientific revolution not happen in
the Muslim world? Why has much of Islamic history been marked by
aggressive jihad?

Islamic jihad and Islamic violence; the sanctioning of sex slavery;
dehumanization of women; hatred and persecution of non-Muslims and
homosexuals; suppression of free speech; and forced conversions have
been commonplace in the Islamic world ever since the inception of the
religion.

Many teachings in the Islamic scriptures, as well as the biographies
of the founder of the religion, set up the parameters where these abuses
not only occur but remain protected on a gigantic scale. These are the
teachings that have become the culture of the Muslim world.
Sadly, most Muslims have wasted much time, energy and resources on
killing and destruction, but -- with the exception of some
civilization's most dazzling artistic splendors -- not on scientific and
cultural advancement.

Recently, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber al-Thani, the former Prime Minister of Qatar, said
that claims that Qatar paid bribes to win the hosting rights of the
2022 World Cup were "not fair" and stemmed from the West's Islamophobia
and racism towards Arabs.
Recent events indicate that he was, at best, "misinformed."

Deny everything and blame "the infidel" for your shortcomings.
Nothing is more important than your honor, and nothing worse than your
shame.

If Muslims wish to create a brighter future, nothing is stopping us
but ourselves. We should learn to analyze critically our present and our
past.

Human rights activists and academics in the West are lying to Muslims
about their culture, and bashing and threatening America, Europe or
"Zionism" for the problems of Muslims; this can never lead to any
positive developments in the Muslim world. It is the Islamic culture and
religious ideology that are responsible for these problems

If there is ever going to be an enlightenment, reform or renaissance
in the Muslim world, only a hard look and hard questioning can be its
starting point.

Uzay Bulut, born and raised a Muslim, is a Turkish journalist based in Ankara.

[1]
Also the Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic Republic of Iran, al-Qaeda,
Al-Badr, al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, Islamic Jihad, al-Nusra Front,
Hizb-ut-Tahrir, Al Ghurabaa, Al-Itihaad al-Islamiya, Al-Mourabitoun,
Abdullah Azzam Brigades, Jaish al-Muhajireen wal-Ansar, Jamaat
Ul-Furquan, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh, Jamiat
al-Islah al-Idzhtimai, Great Eastern Islamic Raiders' Front, Al-Shabaab,
Abu Sayyaf, Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi, Supreme Military
Majlis ul-Shura of the United Mujahideen Forces of Caucasus, to name
just a few.[2] See: "Gender Equality Gap Greatest in Islamic Countries, Survey Shows", by Patrick Goodenough, October 29, 2014; "The Treatment of Women In Islam," by Rachel Molschky, October 7, 2013; "Women Suffer at the Hands of Radical Islam", by Raymond Ibrahim, January 9, 2014; "As Muslim women suffer, feminists avert their gaze", by Robert Fulford, National Post; Ayse Onal, a leading Turkish journalist, says in her book, Honour Killing: Stories of Men Who Killed, that in Turkey alone honour killings average about one a day -- 1,806 were reported in the period between 2000 and 2005.[3] Daron, Acemoglu & Robinson, James (2012), Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty, Crown Publishing Group.

Behind the French "Peace Initiative"

It is a desperate attempt by
the French government to buy a few more days of quiet from its Muslim
community, especially from the members of the Muslim Brotherhood and the
terrorist organizations to which it gave birth -- all waiting for the
order to run riot through the streets of France.

If it succeeds, may Allah prevent it, it will lead
to an ISIS and Hamas takeover of every inch of Palestinian soil from
which Israel withdraws if coerced by the initiative.

It is evidently too frustrating and unrewarding just
to sit in the U.N. and not think of some project supposedly to spread
beneficence that could make your country look important to the other 190
members -- even if this beneficence is lethal to its recipient.

When the Byzantium fell to the Ottoman Empire, the
churches, including the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, were turned into
mosques; that is the dream of the Islamists today, to turn the Vatican
into a mosque.

Currently, Qatar is currently investing millions to
overthrow the Egyptian regime. It is investing millions to finance
incitement among Muslims around the globe by means of its Islamist
network and da'wah, the cunning preaching of the Muslim Brotherhood's variety of Islam.

The Arabs always secretly believed that anyone who
hated their mutual enemies, the Jews, as deeply as the Europeans did,
and who actually tried to achieve their total physical destruction
during the Second World War, would be their ally and help to expel them
from occupied Palestine.

Apparently, the commonly-held hatred between the
Europeans and the Arabs was not enough to halt the Jews, so now the
Arabs pay huge sums to bribe the leaders of Europe to help them get rid
of the Jews now.

The latest missile to split the skies over the Middle East is not a rocket; it is the French "peace" initiative.

No one in the Middle East has the slightest doubt that whatever its
objective may be, it will not promote peace between Israel and the
Palestinians. It is a desperate attempt by the French government to buy a
few more days of quiet from its Muslim community, especially from the
members of the Muslim Brotherhood and the terrorist organizations to
which it gave birth -- all waiting for the order to run riot through the
streets of France.

We, the Palestinians, have suffered, and continue to suffer, from the
creation of the Islamist terrorist organizations within the Palestinian
Authority territory; it is they who keep us from reaching a peace
agreement with the Jews.

One has to be deaf, dumb and blind -- or genuinely desperate, which
is more likely -- to present a unilateral peace agreement like the
French one. If it succeeds, may Allah prevent it, it will lead to an
ISIS and Hamas takeover of every inch of Palestinian soil from which
Israel withdraws if coerced by the initiative.

One also has to be simply ignorant not to understand that the Middle
East is going up in flames and that the Arab states are disintegrating.
There is no logical reason, therefore, to construct a new state, which
will be both unstable and prey to local and regional
subversion. It will also be subject to a quick takeover, and the first
people who will suffer will be the Palestinians in the occupied
territories.

The Israelis know how to look out for themselves, but we will be left to the tender mercies of Hamas and ISIS mujahedeen.
Just as they have done in Iraq and Syria, they will slaughter us
without thinking twice, on the grounds that as we did not all become shaheeds
["martyrs" for Islam] trying to kill the Zionists, and even tried to
reach a peace agreement with them, we are not sufficiently Muslim.

The French initiative is not a benevolent gesture meant to help the
Palestinians. Without a doubt, the French government and its
intelligence services know full well that the secret of the Palestinian
Authority's existence today -- and its ability to function as a
sovereign entity, demilitarized and de facto recognizing the State of
Israel -- is its security collaboration with the Israelis. It serves the
interests of both sides. When, therefore, a Palestinian state is
declared unilaterally, as the French propose, Israel will stop
collaborating with it and the state, not even fully formed, will almost
instantly fall prey to Islamist extremists. That is obvious to us: even
our institutions of higher learning are ruled by Hamas today, as can be
seen by Hamas's landslide victory in the recent student elections in Bir
Zeit University.

The recent visit of U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham to Israel helped the
Palestinians understand even more thoroughly that behind the French
initiative is an attempt, as with many members of the U.N., to "be a
player." It is evidently too frustrating and unrewarding just to sit in
the U.N. and not think of some project supposedly to spread beneficence
that could make your country look important to the other 190 members --
even if this beneficence is lethal to its recipient. One way of doing
spreading such beneficence is to take over the peace process through the
Security Council, force both sides into a unilateral solution, and not
even to feign dismay when its first victims are the Palestinians.

Senator Graham referred to the drastic nature of the initiative and
stressed that the United States supported the solution of two states for
two peoples, according to the vision of Israel's current Prime
Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu. It favors a demilitarized Palestinian
state that would recognize Israel as a Jewish state and make it possible
for everyone, both Jews and Palestinians, to live with self-respect and
independence.

Graham threatened the UN, saying that if promotes the French
initiative, he would bid to halt American funding for the UN -- nearly a
quarter of its budget.

Today, the UN's funds are twisted into sending peacekeepers, who have
diplomatic immunity and therefore cannot be sued, out to Africa to
demand sex, often from children, in exchange for food or other
necessities; and to passing resolutions aimed at harming Israel, while
the organization callously ignores floggings in Saudi Arabia, slavery in
Mauritania; escalating executions, calls for genocide and violations of
nuclear treaties in Iran, just for a start.

The situation is grotesque. They are basically accusing Israel of
"terrorism" for defending itself against by rockets fired from Hamas, in
a confrontation where Gazan children were hurt because Hamas used them
as human shields -- while ignoring the real terrorism against the
children of Africa committed by the U.N.'s own peacekeepers, Boko Haram,
Iran and Sudan. When they so twist logic as to accuse Israel of
"terrorism," while turning their back on the horrendous abuses by other
states, they are essentially giving paedophile UN "peacekeepers," Iran's
torturers, executioners, and nuclear weapons factories a green light.

Graham was very clear about the American point of view. He said that
any country that tried to bring Israel to the International Criminal
Court in The Hague would have sanctions imposed on it by the United
States.

The parade of the grotesque is the direct result of the Western
surrender to Islamic terrorism. Now, sadly, the Vatican has also joined
France. The assumption that the Islamists can be pandered to and
propitiated by harming the Jews is yet another prevalent misconception.
Every gesture to the Islamists, even if it is aimed at "helping" the
Palestinians, sends a message of weakness and vulnerability, and
increases the Islamists' aggression against Christians and other
non-Muslim minorities.

In the Middle East, anyone who "turns the other cheek," such as the
Pope saying that the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, could be "an
angel of peace," will find his neck under the sword. When Byzantium fell
to the Ottoman Empire, its churches, including the Hagia Sophia in
Constantinople, were turned into mosques; that is the dream of the
Islamists today, to turn the Vatican into a mosque.

The dangerous European surrender to radical Islam is not only an
attempt to hold off its threat to the free society of Europe just a
little longer. It is also the result of the economic distress of the
Western world, which is seeking to keep afloat by selling itself,
literally, for petro-dollars. The Vatican is in desperate financial
straits -- there are fewer practicing Catholics and therefore fewer
donating Catholics. It is hard not to feel that the anti-Israel
manipulations of the Vatican administration are motivated not by a
genuine desire to help the Palestinians or to save Christians in the
Middle East, but by a genuine desire to extricate itself from its
financial straits.

Judas sold Jesus for thirty pieces of silver; Boko Haram sells girls
for the price of a pack of cigarettes, and Europe is selling itself and
the Israelis to Qatar.

Europe is in the same situation as the Vatican; and so are many
American universities, which are selling radical Islamist education for
petro-dollars from the Persian Gulf. This enables the Islamists to
rewrite history and endanger the open way of life in the gullible West.

There is already a Muslim Brotherhood lobby in the United States, a
syndicate trying to force the administration to undermine the current
Egyptian president, who is an enemy of the murderous Muslim Brotherhood.
Their aim is to restore to power the Islamist dictator Mohamed Morsi
(who is also a member of the Muslim Brotherhood), and to sabotage the
measures Egypt is currently taking to rehabilitate itself.

The ease with which Qatar, the petro-dollar heavyweight, manipulates
terrorist organizations in the Middle East is unnerving. The country
both hosts and finances senior Muslim Brotherhood figures such as Sheikh
Yusuf al-Qaradawi and others responsible for spreading the doctrine of
radical Islamism and terrorism around the world.

Qatar finances a wide range of subversive Islamist terrorist
organizations, among them ISIS, Al-Qaeda, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic
Jihad and various other global jihad organizations operating under the
aegis of the Arab-Muslim regimes. Qatar also seeks to carve out enclaves
in Africa and the West, and to turn the West's pluralistic melting pot
into a seething cauldron of terrorist operatives who will, when given
the signal, bludgeon Europe and America to the ground.

The petro-dollars of the Qatari feudal lords, totalitarians who
dictate their whims to a population with no rights, direct a global
network of propaganda and incitement, through vehicles such as
Al-Jazeera TV in Arabic, light years more toxic than Al Jazeera in
English. It crowns kings and topples regimes throughout the Middle East,
as it did by endlessly replaying the self-immolation of the young
Tunisian fruit vendor who could not get a license, until it whipped up
the Tunisians and Egyptians to start the "Arab Spring." Currently, Qatar
is investing millions to overthrow the Egyptian regime. It is investing
millions to finance incitement among Muslims around the globe by means
of its Islamist network and da'wah, the cunning preaching of the Muslim Brotherhood's variety of Islam.

The Arabs always felt that the Europeans had a soft spot in their
hearts for them. They always secretly believed that anyone who hated
their mutual enemies, the Jews, as deeply as the Europeans did, and who
actually tried to achieve their total physical destruction during the
Second World War, would be their ally and help to expel them from
occupied Palestine. Apparently, the commonly-held hatred between the
Europeans and the Arabs was not enough to halt the Jews, so now the
Arabs pay huge sums to bribe the leaders of Europe to help them get rid
of the Jews now.

Just look at the extensive corruption of the heads of FIFA, bought
and paid-for by Qatar. All it took was $100 million, and Qatar could
host the World Cup. It makes one wonder what Qatar would be willing to
pay for other projects, doesn't it?

Saturday, June 27, 2015

Educating, Inspiring the Populace: Never Forget

"[A variety of tortures -- 110 types in all -- inflicted on Koreans by the U.S. were] worse than the methods of Hitler.""While forgetting their own atrocities, the United States is in no position to talk about human rights."Choe Jong Suk, guide, Susan-ri Class Education Centre

"I wanted to kill Americans.""Every anniversary, my hatred only increases. Our nation must have its revenge.""Go tell that to your countrymen."Jong Kun Song, guide, Sinchon Museum of American War Atrocities

Thousands of North Korean
people raise their fists in the air during an anti-US rally at Kim
Il-Sung stadium in Pyongyang

"We appeal to the world to turn out in the worldwide anti-U.S. struggle to dismember the gangster U.S. imperialists.""Asia should turn out to cut off the U.S. right hand, Africa should rise up to cut off the U.S. left hand, the Mid-East has to cut off the U.S. ankles and Europe has to cut off the U.S neck.""The only way for the U.S. to take is to make apology before the army and people of the DPRK and hoist a white flag."North Korean Central News Agency, Pyongyang

"We should strengthen our security preparedness and military power ... as the situation on the Korean peninsula remains unstable six decades after the war ended.""The government will deal sternly with any provocations from North Korea."South Korean Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-Ahn

June, celebrated in North Korea as "Struggle Against U.S. Imperialism Month" has once again rallied loyal North Koreans, seeing them swarm to war museums and gathering to denounce the unspeakable evils of the United States as the nation whips itself into a frenzy of anti-American hatred. Thursday marked the 65th anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War. A rally gathering 100,000 people took place in Ki Il Sung Stadium in Pyongyang to inspire the people to revenge.

Thousands of people pump
their fists in unison at the end of the 'Struggle Against American
Imperialism' month in North Korea

This was a war that claimed millions of Korean lives as the North and the South struggled for supremacy. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese, dispatched to fight alongside the communist North Koreans also lost their lives, while tens of thousands of Americans, aiding the South Koreans in their determination to push back the Communist tide, also died, or were missing in action. While history notes that the North Koreans attacked the Capitalist South across the 38th parallel, the U.S. was the attacker in the North Korean version of events.

The regime keeps blame and excoriating hatred alive despite its version of history coming at odds even with documents released by wartime allies China and the Soviet Union, in the greater interests of investing its narrative of heroism on the part of the founder of North Korea, Kim Il-sung and his son Kim Jong-il, father of the current Dear Leader, Kim Jong-un. The country survived the massive deadly struggle against the evil plans of the monolithic U.S. thanks to their courage and perseverance.

The Pyongyang Mass Rally on the Day of the Struggle Against the U.S. saw the faithful gather to pump their fists in denial of American might, and accusations of the evil-doing it imposes on continents around the world, the world's sole war-mongering state bringing death and destruction wherever it turns its baleful, malevolent eye for further disruption across the planet.

Visitors to the museums were introduced to tales of atrocities, massacres and horrible tortures inflicted upon the nation. Photographs of mangled bodies, displays of skulls, spikes driven through them and paintings of fiendish U.S. soldiers and their South Korean helpers on display. One guide described a man bound to a tree, eyes plucked out, shot repeatedly while pledging alliance to the country and his leader.

History lesson: School
children walk through a room displaying pictures of alleged atrocities
at the Sinchon Museum of American War Atrocities, in South Hwanghae,
North Korea

Another guide described a village where the children were separated from their mothers, placed in a pit underground where American soldiers poured gasoline down air vents killing the children, before retreating. More than adequately persuading North Koreans that their isolation from the world at large is for their own protection from the scourge of American notice.

And that their resolute, intrepid, courageous leader is resolved to keep them from all future harm. They must continue to depend on him and his peerless entourage to ensure that the country is protected from those who plan to do it harm, from South Koreans to Americans, all plotting the downfall of the most wonderful country in the world to be a citizen in.

"I realize why I keep working at a channel which is alone facing thousands, tens of thousands of Western media outlets, telling the other side of the story, finding itself in the cross-hairs of those media and struggling to fend off their attacks. Because it's my Motherland."RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan

"If you follow the RT Twitter feed as I do to my eternal teeth-gritting annoyance, it's full of stories of racism in the U.S., police corruption in the U.K., gay propaganda in Sweden.""The West is playing 19th-Century Victorian boxing while Russia is using karate."Ben Nimmo, former NATO press officer

"They aren't concerned to prove they are right, but to muddy the information space so much that it's hard to get the truth through."Adam Thomson, British ambassador to NATO

Thomas Lohnes/Getty Images

Public relations is one of the thorny issues confronting European Union leaders in their discussions at the Brussels summit. Russia's government appears to have spent thought and time in putting together an effective media machine to target its interior and to convince a foreign audience that all the news that's fit to print does not always reach them, and Russia's version of events give food for appetizing thought for those to care to know the truth.

They have enlisted some American media heavy-hitters in their campaign to air Moscow's version of world events. The murkier the relations become between Russia, the U.S. and NATO, the more persuasive the message becomes that Russia stands stalwart and unintimidated by powerful forces intending to bring it to its knees, and in the process creating a non-existent emergency, dividing former allies and creating hostility where none should exist.

Larry King has been enlisted to reach households around the world with his convincing good will through talking with celebrities and entertaining the worthy. Former governor and professional wrestler, once a member of the Navy SEALs, Jessie Ventura has added his intellectual and public relations heft to Russia's half-billion-a-year commitment to getting its story out, trumping the efforts of NATO states to explain to their constituents the strains and sanctions earned by Moscow.

Jesse Ventura featured "torture whistleblower" John Kiriakou stating the CIA "is run by lunatics", and that the U.S. Federal Reserve is an "illegal institution"; two claims that may have a modicum of veracity on the face of things, yet bear nothing as much scrutiny as Russian institutions of the same purpose bear for outright depth and commitment to corruption. AP also involves itself, providing text, photos and raw video footage to the English-language RT.

"Larry King, well, you and I know him. He's a chap of great broadcasting credibility", Lt.-Col. Simon West, a British Army specialist on strategic communications allowed, in speaking of RT's programming initiative meant to to gather audience trust. He is acting as a consultant at a Riga, Latvia-based facility initiated by NATO member states to address the flow of information from Moscow challenging the Western version of situational events."Russia's ongoing disinformation campaigns" have stimulated a draft EU "Action plan on strategic communication", calling for a group of measures to balance and hopefully surmount the Russian plan. Witold Waszeyzkowski, Polish member of Parliament points out the strategy Moscow is employing, which leaves viewers with the impression they are listening to a Western source, unaware that they have tuned into a Kremlin-paid information machine.

Friday, June 26, 2015

Truth and Consequences

"As a British officer who had more than his share of fighting in Afghanistan,
Iraq and the Balkans, it pains me greatly to see words and actions from the
United Nations that can only provoke further violence and loss of life. The
United Nations Human Rights Council report on last summer’s conflict in Gaza,
prepared by Judge Mary McGowan Davis, and published on Monday, will do just
that.""The report starts by attributing responsibility for the
conflict to Israel’s “protracted occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza
Strip,” as well as the blockade of Gaza. Israel withdrew from Gaza 10 years ago.
In 2007 it imposed a selective blockade only in response to attacks by Hamas and
the import of munitions and military matériel from Iran. The conflict last
summer, which began with a dramatic escalation in rocket attacks targeting
Israeli civilians, was a continuation of Hamas’s war of aggression.""In an unusual concession, the report suggests that Hamas
may have been guilty of war crimes, but it still legitimizes Hamas’s rocket and
tunnel attacks and even sympathizes with the geographical challenges in
launching rockets at Israeli civilians: “Gaza’s small size and its population
density make it particularly difficult for armed groups always to comply” with
the requirement not to launch attacks from civilian areas."Col. Richard Kemp, former commander of British forces in Afghanistan

"Hamas training and doctrinal materials ... attest to Hamas's intentional efforts to draw the IDF into combat in densely populated areas and to actively use the civilian population in order to obstruct the IDF's military operations.""Hamas also actively encouraged and even coerced civilians to remain in areas of hostilities in order to impede IDF attack and shield military activities."Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs report

Source: United Nations

A morally bankrupt United Nations is once again condemning a member-state for its effrontery in attempting to defend itself from violent criminal attacks by terrorist groups bordering its state and targeting innocent civilians. The UN's Human Rights Council has issued its report on the 2014 conflict in Gaza, when Israel's forbearance in the face of constant rocket attacks from Gaza into Israel finally ebbed to the point of rallying a much-needed defence.

Hamas, a terrorist group noted as such by countries in the West and declared a terrorist group by countries in the Middle East, an offshoot of the notoriously Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, whose charter calls for the destruction of the State of Israel, takes its funding orders from enemy-states of Israel, Iran and Qatar. The funding and the incitement help, but Hamas's dedication to jihad and the view that Israel must be driven into the sea and its citizens slaughtered, needs no incentive from other sources.

The kind of resourcefulness that Hamas operatives display in building underground tunnels to enable it to enter Israel undetected and to perform the function of a protective underground haven for Hamas leaders is concrete-costly and time-absorbing. Resources that should go toward building civic infrastructure in Gaza are redirected to well-designed and -equipped tunnels under Gaza City where Hamas leaders can find tranquil protection from IDF attacks in response to those that Hamas launches from civilian enclaves.

A donkey pulls a cart among bombed buildings in Gaza City. Many homes
are yet to be demolished or rebuilt nearly a year after the conflict.
Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
Hamas terrorist guerrillas pass through tunnels under the borders of both Gaza and Israel in hopes of killing or capturing Israeli soldiers, but entering the confines of Israeli towns and kibbutzim to abduct or slaughter innocent Israelis is just as valuable in contributing to the Hamas cause of terror. All the nations that support blaming Israel for Palestinian deaths in Gaza are sanctimoniously averse to Israel defending its own, though none would tolerate for one day, let alone for years, the presence of such threats on their own borders.

Israel was forced yet again to militarily engage with an enemy which prides itself on elusiveness. While the terrorist fighters launch attacks from the vicinity of schools, apartments, hospitals in full knowledge of and anticipation that responding attacks will be expected, to destroy those launch sites, Israel in defending itself is accused of war crimes. No advance warning is extended by Hamas and other terrorist groups before rockets are sent careening into Israel, but Israel continually warns Gazans to clear out before an area attack takes place.

This kind of unequal war footing is unique to Israel, always mindful to the best of its ability to attempt to reduce civilian casualties and deaths to a minimum, but pressed to the limit by the schemes of Hamas to extract public relations points from the international community, portraying Israel as the aggressor and the slaughterer of Arab women and children. Those same Arab women and children are given treatment when feasible, for their wounds in Israeli hospitals.

What other country would take care to provide medicines and food to civilians of belligerent terrorist enclaves while fighting off the attacks by the terrorists who purport to represent the interests of the civilians suffering privation, fear and live-and-present mortal danger? Some four thousand rockets were launched by Hamas into Israel and roughly 250 of those rockets fell short of their targets, landing within Gaza, causing in some instances additional casualties there.

The UN Human Rights Council equating the self-protective actions of a legitimate and peaceful state with those of an attacking, war-mongering quasi-state of terrorists is the last word in hateful hypocrisy. As though comparing a country whose laws protect civilians from harm to a territory whose rulers casually use their populace as shields to enable the terrorists to escape the consequences of their actions in provoking war, is a legitimate tool of justice.

What other country of the world would restrain itself in responding to deadly attacks because the eyes of the world swivel in swift condemnation any time those responses take their inevitable toll on civilians, and then because of international censure ceases its fire leaving itself as a result vulnerable to ongoing repeated attacks leading to new confrontations?

GENEVA, June 25, 2015 - UN Watch will be
leading an international response to the UN's new
Gaza report in the plenary of the Human Rights Council, at a debate on
Monday under the 47-nation body's permanent agenda item targeting Israel.

The campaign to tell the truth about the war launched last summer
by Hamas will include appearances by prominent American, British and European
political and military figures at the UNHRC plenary, a press conference, and a
panel event for diplomats and human rights activists. Speeches will be posted on
our channel at YouTube.com/unwatch.

• Senior military
experts will present the findings of two fact-finding missions -- the
report of the JINSA Task
Force on the Gaza Conflict by five U.S. generals, and the preliminary
findings of the high-level international group of 11 military and political
figures -- both of which contrast sharply with the UN report. Watch their event
on live webcast at www.unwatch.org/gazaresponse on
Monday, June 29th, at 5:15 pm Geneva time (11:15 am EST to 1:00 pm
EST).

• A major new book by UN
Watch and NGO Monitor,Filling in the Blanks: Documenting Missing
Dimensions in UN and NGO Investigations of the Gaza Conflict, will be
released at the side event.

• Expert speakers will additionally include Dr. Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for the
Defense of Democracies, who will analyze the funders of Hamas; and NGO Monitor
president Prof. Gerald Steinberg and Legal
Advisor Anne Herzberg, who will address
distortions of the report, and the problematic role played by groups like Human
Rights Watch, whose director Ken Roth actively supported Hamas during the war.
(See below his infamous "International Humanitarian Law allows" tweet
from August 19th, in defense of Hamas terror
tunnels.)

The report of the UN inquiry
-- headed for six months by William Schabas until he was forced to
resign over his undisclosed paid legal work for the PLO, and then by Mary
McGowan Davis, who in 2010 served on a similar committee to implement the
notorious Goldstone Report -- repeatedly equates Israel with Hamas,and insinuates that Israel's "political and military
leaders" are guilty of war crimes.

The UN report concludes with athinly-veiled
call for members of Israel's "political and
military establishment, including at the senior level" to be investigated by the International Criminal Court; prosecuted by individual
countries that embrace universal jurisdiction; and for other countries to
"comply with extradition requests" pertaining to "suspects of such crimes" to be
sent to countries where they would "face a fair trial."

For
analysis of the UN report:

• One
of the most detailed
and damning comes from The Lawfare Blog, affiliated with the
Brookings Institution. Brookings senior fellow Benjamin Wittes and Lawfare associate editor Yishai Schwartz are clear:“The UN
Human Rights Council’s Independent Commission of Inquiry report on the 2014 Gaza
war, released Monday, is a bad piece of work—bad in almost entirely predictable
and boring ways, but no less bad for being bad and
predictable."

•
Col. Richard Kemp, the former commander of British forces in
Afghanistan, who will be part of the UN Watch delegation, published a brilliant
op-ed in today's New York Times -- see
below.

________________________

The U.N.’s Gaza Report Is Flawed
and Dangerous

By RICHARD KEMP JUNE 25, 2015

LONDON — As a British officer who
had more than his share of fighting in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Balkans, it
pains me greatly to see words and actions from the United Nations that can only
provoke further violence and loss of life. The United Nations Human Rights
Council report on last summer’s conflict in Gaza, prepared by Judge Mary McGowan
Davis, and published on Monday, will do just that.

The report starts by attributing responsibility for the
conflict to Israel’s “protracted occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza
Strip,” as well as the blockade of Gaza. Israel withdrew from Gaza 10 years ago.
In 2007 it imposed a selective blockade only in response to attacks by Hamas and
the import of munitions and military matériel from Iran. The conflict last
summer, which began with a dramatic escalation in rocket attacks targeting
Israeli civilians, was a continuation of Hamas’s war of aggression.

In an unusual concession, the report suggests that Hamas
may have been guilty of war crimes, but it still legitimizes Hamas’s rocket and
tunnel attacks and even sympathizes with the geographical challenges in
launching rockets at Israeli civilians: “Gaza’s small size and its population
density make it particularly difficult for armed groups always to comply” with
the requirement not to launch attacks from civilian areas.

There is no such sympathy for Israel. Judge Davis
accuses the Israel Defense Forces of “serious violations of international
humanitarian law and international human rights law.” Yet no evidence is put
forward to substantiate these accusations. It is as though the drafters of the
report believe that any civilian death in war must be illegal.

Referring to cases in which Israeli attacks killed
civilians in residential areas, Judge Davis says that in the absence of contrary
information available to her commission, there are strong indications that the
attacks were disproportionate, and therefore war crimes. But all we get is
speculation and the presumption of guilt.

The report is
characterized by a lack of understanding of warfare. That is hardly surprising.
Judge Davis admitted, when I testified
before her in February, that the commission, though investigating a war, had no
military expertise. Perhaps that is why no attempt has been made to judge
Israeli military operations against the practices of other armies. Without such
international benchmarks, the report’s findings are meaningless.

The commission could have listened to Gen. Martin E.
Dempsey, chairman of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff, who said last
November that the I.D.F. had taken extraordinary measures to try to limit
civilian casualties. Or to a group of 11 senior military officers from seven
nations, including the United States, Germany, Spain and Australia, who also
investigated the Gaza conflict recently. I was a member of that group, and our
report,
made available to Judge Davis, said: “None of us is aware of any army that takes
such extensive measures as did the I.D.F. last summer to protect the lives of
the civilian population.”

The report acknowledges
that Israel took steps to warn of imminent attacks but suggests more should have
been done to minimize civilian casualties. Yet it offers no opinion about what
additional measures Israel could have taken. It even criticizes Israel for using
harmless explosive devices — the “knock on the roof” — as a final warning to
evacuate targeted buildings, suggesting that it created confusion. No other
country uses roof-knocks, a munition developed by Israel as part of a series of
I.D.F. warning procedures, including text messages, phone calls and leaflet
drops, that are known to have saved many Palestinian lives.

Judge Davis suggests that the I.D.F.’s use of air, tank
and artillery fire in populated areas may constitute a war crime and recommends
further international legal restrictions on their use. Yet these same systems
were used extensively by American and British forces in similar circumstances in
Iraq and Afghanistan. They are often vital in saving the lives of our own
soldiers, and their curtailment would jeopardize military effectiveness while
handing an advantage to our enemies.

The I.D.F. is not perfect.
In the heat of battle and under stress its commanders and soldiers undoubtedly
made mistakes. Weapons malfunctioned, intelligence was sometimes wrong and, as
with all armies, it has some bad soldiers. Unnecessary deaths resulted, and
these should be investigated and the individuals brought to trial if criminal
culpability is suspected.

The reason so many
civilians died in Gaza last summer was not Israeli tactics or policy. It was
Hamas’s strategy. Hamas deliberately positioned its fighters and munitions in
civilian areas, knowing that Israel would have no choice but to attack them and
that civilian casualties would result. Unable to inflict existential harm on
Israel by military means, Hamas sought to cause large numbers of casualties
among its own people in order to bring international condemnation and unbearable
diplomatic pressure against Israel.

Judge Davis’s report is
rife with contradictions. She acknowledges that Israeli military precautions
saved lives, yet without foundation accuses “decision makers at the highest
levels of the government of Israel” of a policy of deliberately killing
civilians. Incredibly, she “regrets” that her commission was unable to verify
the use of civilian buildings by “Palestinian armed groups,” yet elsewhere
acknowledges Hamas’s widespread use of protected locations, including United
Nations schools.

Most worrying, Judge Davis
claims to be “fully aware of the need for Israel to address its security
concerns” while demanding that it “lift, immediately and unconditionally, the
blockade on Gaza.” Along with the report’s endorsement of Hamas’s anti-Israel
narrative, this dangerous recommendation would undoubtedly lead to further
bloodshed in both Israel and Gaza.

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This represents a general opinion site for its author. It also offers a space for the author to record her experiences and perceptions,both personal and public. This is rendered obvious by the content contained in the blog, but the space is here inviting me to write. And so I do.